Political interference in the New York/New Jersey area is a central reason for widespread airline delays, explains Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation (which works to make air travel faster and safer by reforming antiquated, wasteful FAA policies):
Last year, airspace congestion in the New York/New Jersey metro area got so bad that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed flight reductions on the airlines serving LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy, and Newark Liberty airports. Travelers had fewer choices, and still experienced delays in arrivals and departures.
Due to the ripple effects of congestion in the N.Y./N.J. area on other U.S. airports, the FAA estimates that this complex airspace is responsible for up to 75 percent of all U.S. airline delays.
The N.Y./N.J. airspace, which manages arrivals and departures for nine airports from a single facility on Long Island known as N90, is not the only complex metro area airspace. Two decades ago, the FAA launched a program to redesign and simplify the airspace of a dozen major metro areas, including the N.Y./N.J. airspace. This “Metroplex” program concluded about a year ago, but N.Y./N.J. airspace was left out. New York members of Congress, including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.), fought and succeeded in keeping N.Y./N.J. airspace unreformed. They considered N90 “their” facility and opposed any changes, especially those that might relocate jobs.
A 2023 U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general report identified N90 as having the lowest percentage of fully certified controllers among comparable facilities—just 54 percent of the desired staffing level. A never-released report by the same agency in 2005 found that overtime and sick leave at N90 were off the charts, leading to very low productivity and very high costs. Since that report was never released, the airlines, Congress, and the public were unaware of how bad things were.
In 2014, the FAA devised a plan to address the understaffing and high costs of the New York/New Jersey facility. It would shift responsibility for approaches and departures for the five airports in New Jersey to a well-staffed facility in Philadelphia. That would ameliorate the controller shortage at N90, by cutting the air traffic they handle by one-third.
The controllers’ union chapter at N90 launched a political campaign against the plan, with the backing of Schumer and his congressional allies. So the plan was dropped for 9 years.
But the plan was revived last year, in response to air traffic control problems growing even more acute. The airlines and the national leadership of the air traffic controllers’ union agreed on the plan, which was slated to go into effect on July 28, 2024. On July 17, 17 controllers who’d been scheduled to transfer to Philadelphia refused to relocate. But 14 others volunteered. It looked like problems would finally be resolved.
But on August 2, Schumer, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–NY) and five other members of Congress from from New York, sent the FAA a letter demanding the plan be canceled. Never mind that, as an airline executive explained to Politico, “Doing nothing to fix the most chronically understaffed and also busiest airspace in the system was not an option. Long-term, this is the most effective solution.”
As Poole notes,
Most Americans are unaware that this kind of political meddling is rare in most developed countries. Since 1987, more than 60 countries have depoliticized their air traffic control systems. Instead of being part of a government transportation agency funded by the legislative body, these systems have been converted into self-supporting public utilities. They charge airlines and business jets for their services and can issue revenue bonds to finance facility replacements or expansions. (In contrast, the FAA depends solely on whatever Congress appropriates each year and is not allowed to issue bonds.)
Air-traffic control regulations need to be modernized to improve safety, reduce costs, and incorporate technological advances, notes Marc Scribner of the Reason Foundation — such as making it easier to set up remote/digital air traffic control towers, which can be privately provided and don’t require expensive unionized FAA employees:
The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 (Public Law 118–63) was enacted on May 16 and runs through the end of Sept. 2028. The law includes Section 621, which aims to counteract the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) administrative inertia on remote/digital air traffic control towers that have so far prevented adoption of these technologies in the United States. Reason Foundation served as a subject-matter expert as Congress developed legislative language targeting barriers within FAA to remote tower certification and deployment.
According to a database maintained by the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations (IFATCA), globally, there are 11 fully operational remote towers, 16 under development and expected to be operational within three years, and six remote tower centers managing multiple remote towers—in addition to several contingency towers, remote tower research sites, and pre-development projects. Most of these are concentrated in Europe, where the technology was first commercialized, but interest is growing rapidly in Asia/Pacific, and the benefits of remote towers can be realized worldwide.
